Given the busy schedules for people in modern society, it is often difficult getting in touch with one another. “Phone tag” is commonplace, wherein parties who are trying to call each other end up leaving a series of voicemails until they are lucky enough to connect. In other scenarios, people are interrupted by calls when they are busy working, in a meeting, or on another call.
Many business-based software applications, such as Microsoft® Office Outlook®, allow people on a common network to maintain and share scheduling information via their personal computers. However, such sharing of calendar information is relatively limited and of little assistance when parties are on the go and communicating primarily through their telephones. Given the benefit of having access to another person's calendar information to determine whether the person is available for a telephone call, there is a need to use the calendar information of a called party to assist callers who are attempting to communicate with the called party. There is a further need to allow called parties to provide informative scheduling information to callers in an efficient and effective manner.